


love aside

by vicariously kingly (pelted)



Category: Red Dead Redemption
Genre: Alternate Universe - Daemons, Gen, in which the van der linde gang is a little too close for society's taste, nothing new there eyy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-02
Updated: 2019-01-02
Packaged: 2019-10-02 13:59:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,160
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17265464
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pelted/pseuds/vicariously%20kingly
Summary: The first time one of the van der Linde folk touch her daemon, Sadie near breaks the perpetrator’s face.





	love aside

**Author's Note:**

> This is just a fun little drabble ... I've ideas for where it could go but because it's being so stubborn in getting there, figured I'd at least drop off this snippet. enjoy!
> 
> for context: a daemon is essentially an animal representation of a person's soul/heart/mind. I'm extremely loose with my daemon conventions (HDM book fans, forgive me) -- all you need to know for this fic is: they can't stray too far from their person, they "settle" into an animal shape in a person's teens, and if you (a human) touch another person's daemon, it's an intense, visceral experience (good or bad, depending on how much you're down for your soul being touched by that person).

The first time one of the van der Linde folk touch her daemon, Sadie near breaks the perpetrator’s face.

“Jesus, Adler!” Yelped Pearson, the aforementioned perpetrator and disgruntled owner of a newly split lip. “The hell is wrong with you?”

“The hell is wrong with you, you great stinking ape? Laying your grubby paws on my Jeb like that— let go of me, Arthur! I’m teaching him what his momma forgot, one broken finger at a time.”

“I was just moving the little devil off the spice crates! I was being real gentle, too, but then she went rabid on me!”

“I’ll show you rabid, you cross-eyed, balding, washed up—“

Hauling her back bodily from her well-deserving prey, Arthur protested with a light, almost amused, “Now, Mrs. Adler, we really need his fingers in tact…,” which proved he was as insane and blind as Pearson about what had happened. In a desperate bid to give him a clue about how normal folks reacted to a complete stranger grabbing a person’s daemon, she drove the heel of her boot into his foot. She delighted in his flinch, but soured when Arthur didn’t let her go. Soured further when she craned her head to the side and found her Jeb— looking as spitting mad as a badger could— headed off from wrecking hell on Pearson’s stupid, lazy, ugly sheep by Arthur’s mangy coyote, Tamar.

Pearson was so goddamned lucky, and he didn’t even know it.

“Mr. Morgan,” declared Dutch, sweeping in late as usual when it came to chuckwagon disputes, big busy man he was, “Sadie here seems like she could use some fresh air. Be a gentleman and escort her out, wouldn’t you?”

“Better give me something to shoot while we’re out there,” she snarled, ripping her shoulder from Arthur’s loosened grip after she redirected her mauling malice away from Pearson, “or else I’ll need to practice some once I get back, and that cowering sheep’s looking like the biggest target around.” 

“Don’t talk about Maggie like that,” Pearson growled back. 

“Wasn’t talking about your damn daemon.”

Pearson stopped scowling and nervously jumped when Jeb dodger around Tamar and snapped at his daemon’s hooves. Looked ready to grab Jeb again by the scruff, actually, which put Sadie back into a right snit. 

“Okay,” Arthur cut in, ever the put-upon diplomat, “think that’s enough,” and hauled her off by the arm, his Tamar head butting into Jeb’s side to follow along.

He took her past the scouting fire like that, though she tried to wheedle out of it by explaining she wouldn’t permanently hurt their precious camp cook. The O’Driscoll watched them go, his tiny canary Wendy perched happily and unmolested by strangers on his shoulder.

Arthur took her out to the coastline by their camp, telling her she needed to cool her head and that if she didn’t he’d dunk it in the lake for her. A baffling reaction in her opinion, but not one he budged on. 

“He grabbed Jeb!” She said, like it explained everything. Because it did. It definitely, absolutely did, literally everywhere else.

“Sounded like Jeb needed moving,” Arthur said, cool as a cucumber and as smart as one, too.

“You don’t just grab other folk’s daemons, Arthur.”

“Not strangers’, sure, but—“

“But nothing!”

He glared. Repeated, with hard emphasis, “But, we ain’t strangers. We’re family. Not so strange to have family grabbing each other’s daemons, is it?”

“ _That_ depends on the family,” she sniffed. Hers hadn’t been the touchy sort, daemons or otherwise. “Even if it didn’t, I only see one family in camp, and it ain’t Pearson and me.”

“Just cause you don’t always agree with him—“

“ _Even if I did,_ ” which marked far too many qualifiers and conditionals as it stood, “he ain’t my blood!”

Arthur rubbed his hand over his face. If she were giving him a headache, _good._ He deserved it for being strange enough to take Pearson’s side. 

Dropping his hand back to his side, he leaned in close to her and said, “Round here, we’re all good as blood.” When she didn’t budge or look impressed, he understood his fight was a losing battle and sighed, adding in his most _please just get along and let me leave_ voice, “Listen. How’s about this. I’ll let folk know not to touch Jeb.”

“There you are,” she responded immediately, bitingly chipper. “That’s what I was looking for, yes. Some goddamned respect.”

He scoffed. “Honestly, with how much you look like you want to break all our faces, don’t imagine anybody’s going to argue. It’s astounding to me that folks needed a head’s up.” Easing up, he leaned back out of her space. Sneaked her a tired, _what are we gonna do with you_ look that was far more fond than he probably realized or intended. She felt her eyebrows twitch up, amusement creeping up her face before she became aware of it and scared it off.

Sitting newly subdued at their sides, Tamar gave Jeb an apologetic lick at the corner of his muzzle. In response, he sneezed in her face.

Gave her a quiet, disgruntled _sorry_ after her ears pinned back and nose crinkled, though, because Jeb was a gentleman under the coarse fur. Apologies had always come easier to him than they did Sadie.

“How about that air?” Tamar asked rather than make a big deal of it, or of how Jeb still had some tufts of her fur under his claws, or of how she’d been the sole reason Pearson’s Veronica hadn’t had her belly torn to shreds. “Let’s keep walking.”

“Sounds great,” Arthur agreed, needlessly. “Been meaning to check out those islands to the north. You in?”

“We haven’t got a boat.” Jeb gave away her interest as he gathered all four paws under him and started trundling off north. Not one to be ruled by her daemon, though, Sadie took a moment to side-eye Arthur. 

He shrugged one shoulder, unconcerned. Started north after Jeb, Tamar stuck close to his heels. “Figured we’d borrow one.”

“It's only borrowing if you return it.”

“Can only return it after we’ve borrowed it.”

True enough. Hackles down and the queasy, slimy feeling of Pearson’s hands on Jeb fading, Sadie shook her head but trailed after them. Leaving camp for a spell always did her some good. In the future, she needed to get into the habit of getting out _before_ the temptation for murder grew too great to rightly turn down.

 

* * *

 

After that -- and after bringing back to camp _iguana_ of all things, as well as a hopping-mad fisherman’s boat --, Sadie pulled her head a little farther out of her spiraling pit of misery and anger, and actually paid a lick of attention to the folks she’d started sleeping alongside. Paid attention beyond her initial reads on them, that was; beyond the rough, oft squabbling exterior and til-death loyal interior and straight to the real center. Problem was, she hadn’t the patience for prattling and absolutely no sense for coddling, so she was stuck figuring out the center from the sidelines. In the end. the answer turned out to be simpler than outsides and insides. Jeb pointed it out to her within an afternoon of her deciding to sleuth out just how close everybody was (answer there being a loud, glaring, _very close indeed_ ). 

He said, laid across her lap and enjoying letting her struggle over whether or not to ask Abigail if Pearson’s actions really were typical of the camp, “Karen’s got Allis on her lap.”

Allis, Sean’s excitable terrier. Indeed Karen did, idly scratching behind Allis’ ears as she spoke about something-or-other with Mary Beth. Sean looked to be dead asleep a bedroll away, Karen’s lemur curled up on his chest.

“That ain’t so odd,” Sadie muttered at him. “Little early in the relationship for me, but they seem the sort to like everything quick.”

Jeb harrumphed. He said, “Susan’s brushing out Wexly’s fur.”

Sadie looked. Susan was, fussing over the little tan-and-white stoat with a fine-toothed comb while her own daemon, an old, grey maine coon, sat and watched the stew boil. Wexly looked close to falling asleep. A situation stranger than Karen and Sean, but not _really_. Seemed like an example that fit Arthur’s overly broad description, in fact, as, “Grimshaw’s like a mother to Tilly. A terrifying, strict mother, but one nonetheless.”

“Need you to knock off the excuses, Sadie.”

“Need _you_ to come up with better examples, Jebediah.”

Again, he harrumphed. Fell silent, too, which made her think she’d won their little game of spot-the-peculiars.

Except not five minutes later, his head raised from where it’d draped over her leg and said, “Look at Uncle.”

Uncle, who had his feet - jokingly, presumably - propped on Veronica’s back, the both of them seated in the shade of a big tree. She was surprisingly subdued about the business, as he seemed to be in the midst of telling her a joke, story, or not-so-true mix of both.

“Uncle’s--” Sadie started, a little discomforted but refusing to think of Uncle as anywhere near normal or respectable in the first place. Jeb cut her off.

“Now look at Abigail.”

Abigail, plucking Uncle’s daemon - a big cuckoo bird named Gertrude - from where she’d somehow wedged herself into the firewood pile. Gertrude chirped her thanks, fluttering up to nuzzle into an exasperated Abigail’s neck. To Sadie’s surprise, Abigail didn’t shove her away, and neither did her daemon, a massive brown bear named Daniel, seem ruffled by having his human’s space invaded.

Sadie stared. Said, slowly, “That…” 

“And John?”

Who was nudging Lenny’s palomino pony out of the way to get to the washing bucket, his daemon - a grey-striped tabby cat - hopping down and onto the pony's back as he did so. Despite the commotion around his daemon, Lenny didn’t even glance up from his game of five-finger fillet against Arthur. Of _who_ , Sadie noticed with rapidly replenishing bewilderment, had Hosea’s grey-dusted red fox sprawled at his feet, the wiry creature somehow taking up enough space that Tamar couldn't fit under the table as well. The arrangement clearly didn't surprise Tamar or Arthur or, when Sadie craned her neck to find him, Hosea.

In fact, Hosea was reading a book at his tent. Or, more accurately, he was _trying_ to: a blue jay had perched on the book's cover and seemed to be chattering non-stop at him.

“Did you know,” Jeb remarked casually, “that blue jay is Dutch’s daemon?”

“Yes,” she said, snapping her gaze from the odd configuration, a touch of defensiveness sneaking into her voice. “Obviously. We made introductions.”

Jeb continued smoothly, cool against her temper, “Ever notice she’s never with him?”

“I don’t go staring at people’s daemons. Or stalking their whereabouts.” Sadie excused herself, knowing it came out lamely. Added, more for her own sake, “If I noticed she weren’t perched on his shoulder, I imagined she were up in some branch or-- or atop his tent, or some such.”

He gave her a _look,_ but failed to elaborate.

Obviously the bird was talking to Hosea right then, but she didn't think that captured his whole point. She rolled her eyes. Fine. Since he was being difficult, she drawled, “Where’s she usually, then?”

“Everywhere. She’s with everybody, always.”

That didn’t make sense. Sadie frowned. “She’s never with us.”

“She knows we don’t like it. Sophia’s a clever one.”

“Alright, alright,” she grumbled, slouching further in her seat by the scout fire, “I got it.”

“Do you?”

“ _Yes_. They’re all… cozy.”

Jeb laid his head back down on her lap, wiggling a touch to get comfortable after being satisfied he’d made his point. He never had been one for harping on, though even after the short exchange in pointing out whose daemons were where, she felt wheedled and nettled, her discomfort a tight knot under her ribs Then again, them disagreeing wasn’t an uncommon occurrence. Them not smoothing things over was even more common. If their divide had substantially worsened after Jake’s passing, him going quiet for days on end and her never believing what words he did spare, neither she nor he pointed it out.

In contrast to them, those she watched in camp were cozy. Beyond cozy. She’d never seen anything like it. Heard of something like it, but only in story books, where the feeling of having one’s living heart touched could be fluffed up and hollowed out into comfortable abstracts.

What was happening in camp wasn’t so abstract. It must’ve been comfortable for them, or else there would’ve been more flaring tempers and drawn weapons. More shivering and hating, and less loving. 

Because that was what it was, wasn’t it? Had to be. She didn’t understand it, not one bit, and she wasn’t too convinced it wasn’t some trick or twist on what was true, but love had to be the answer. The camp overflowed with it.

She just hoped, for all their sakes, it lasted.

**Author's Note:**

> thank you for reading! follow me on tumblr @ [unkingly](https://unkingly.tumblr.com/) or twitter @ [exkingly](https://twitter.com/exkingly) for more AU insanity.


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